February is National Arts Month

MANILA -- Agang
Maganda’s exploration of the subconscious is parlayed in rich tones that invite
viewers into a world of fantasy and visceralvisual journey in his latest
exhibition titled Scherzo, Stanza, and Surrealand A Wanderer’s Journey in Music,
Poetry, and Painting.

Maganda's
alluring dreamscapes speak of a tradition that goes back to modern artists at
the turn of the last century.

Artists
like Rousseau, Chagall, Delvaux and Magritte have depicted the inner world in
its most lyrical or sometimes eerie forms. Rousseau's Dream (1910)
depicts a naked woman reclining on the couch amid the verdant foliage of a
moonlit jungle. Paul Delvaux's Entombment (1957) has skeletons and
corpses that seem to come alive.For Magritte, a painting should reveal
the unfamiliar feeling of mystery, as one has even with eyes closed.

Frustrated
with senseless violence, commodification of culture and social relations, and
the utter destruction of everything sublime, artists reckon with these problems
by turning to their inner world of dreams and the unconscious.

Agang
is no different in seeking to transcend reality by depicting dreams in his
paintings. Knowing that our country is always in political turmoil, he gives us
a different view of looking at our world. The artist disrupts the hold we
have on habitual experience and allows us to see our ephemeral universe
resistant to all that is familiar.